Re: [Usability] A few ideas to improve searches in Rhythmbox

[John Spray <jcs116 york ac uk>]

On Mon, 2004-07-26 at 10:14, Julien Olivier wrote:
> Search [        ] among |songs from [name of the artist]|
>                         |songs from [name of the album] |
>                         |all songs                      |
I'm not sure I understand how you're suggesting that interface be laid
out onscreen.  Is this to be an extra list box in the main window?

> My proposition would be simply blank the search field when changing the
> artist or the album filter.
I completely understand the motivation for doing this: I've thought
about it myself.  However, I think it depends upon the idea that the
user uses the search box primarily for searching the whole library.  The
current functionality of the search box includes searches limited by
artist(s) or album(s): to blank the search box when selecting artists
demands that the user specify first the artist, then the search.  It's
an arbitrary limitation on the user, and it's not obvious that that's
going to happen.

I agree that the search box presents UI problems.  Here are a couple of
ideas of my own:

-When the song list contains no items, but there is text in the search
box, present a message in the list box along the lines of "Search for
'penny lane' found no results".  This should alleviate most of the
potential confusion about why no songs are listed, although it doesn't
eliminate the minor annoyance when the user realises they've got to
manually clear the search box.

-Change the functionality of the search box.  Given that its primary
function is for search the whole library (since in most cases a
particular artist can be searched by eye), perhaps this should be made
its only function?  A longer label such as "Search the whole library",
and when there's text in that box, disable the artist/album/genre lists
and have the song list present results from the whole library.

My second suggestion is clearly a sacrifice of functionality for clearer
UI: its implementation would depends entirely on how severe people think
the search box UI problems are.

-- 
John Spray <jcs116 york ac uk>